How to schedule recurring lawn care jobs without a spreadsheet

The way to schedule recurring lawn jobs is to set each property up once as a repeating job, with its day, its cadence and its price, and let the calendar put every visit on the schedule for you. Then you only touch the exceptions: a rain day, a skipped week, a customer who wants to move from weekly to every other week. Most of the work happens the first time you set a lawn up, so do that part carefully.

Here is how to do it, whether you use FieldFlow, another app, or a paper planner.

What does a repeating lawn job need to hold?

Before you pick a tool, decide what every property record carries. A repeating job is only as good as what’s attached to it:

• The customer and the address, with the notes that matter on the day: the gate, the dog, which side to park on.
• The cadence: weekly, every other week, or monthly for a lighter service.
• The day of the week, so the route stays the same and customers know when to expect you.
• The price per visit, from a saved item (“Mow, trim and blow, standard lot”) rather than typed fresh each time.
• Who does it: you, or one of your crews.

If any of these live in your head instead of on the job, they will be wrong the week you’re sick.

How do you set the cadence?

Match the cadence to what you sold. A weekly mow repeats every week on the customer’s day. An every-other-week customer repeats every two weeks. Fertilizing or aeration on a schedule can repeat monthly or once a year.

In FieldFlow, a job can repeat daily, weekly, monthly or yearly, every one or more of those (so “every 2 weeks” is weekly with an interval of two), on chosen weekdays, and it can end after a number of visits or on a date. Set the start date to the first visit, and the visits after it fill in on the calendar. See scheduling for how the calendar shows them.

How should you lay out the week?

Group properties by area and give each area a day. A Tuesday route that stays a Tuesday route is easier on the crew, on fuel, and on customers who leave the gate unlocked for you.

When you set up a new property, put it on the day you already work that neighborhood. If that day is full, that’s a signal to price the next one higher or add a crew, not to scatter the route.

What happens when it rains?

Weather is why spreadsheets fall apart: one rain day pushes thirty rows. With repeating jobs, you move the visits that were rained out, not the series. You can move a single visit to tomorrow, or move that visit and the ones after it when a customer asks for a new regular day.

Tell the customers who moved. With appointment reminders switched on, FieldFlow emails each customer before their visit (24 hours ahead and about an hour before), so the new day reaches them without a phone call; if you’d rather text, Text from my phone fills in the message and your own phone sends it.

What do you do at the end of the season?

Pause, don’t delete. A paused repeating job keeps the customer, the address, the notes and the price, and stops putting new visits on the calendar. In spring you resume it and the visits come back. Deleting and rebuilding fifty properties every March is a day of work you don’t need to do.

How do you bill a repeating job?

Pick one of two habits and stick to it:

1. Bill per visit. Each completed visit gets its own invoice. In FieldFlow, a repeating job can carry an invoice template, and completing a visit drafts that visit’s invoice from it; you check it and send it.
2. Bill monthly. One invoice at the end of the month for the visits you did. This suits customers on a fixed monthly price.

Either way, send it while the work is fresh. Customers pay the invoice they understand, and “4 mows in October” is easy to understand. Overdue ones get followed up by email at 3, 7, 14 and 30 days if you switch reminders on. More on that in invoicing.

What about the crew?

Each visit can have its own crew, so the Tuesday route can go to one truck and Thursday to another without copying jobs. Your crew sees their own visits on their own phone, with the address, the customer’s number and the customer notes, and marks each one done. Time logged on the job is there when you need it for payroll or for checking whether a property is priced right.

Do you need software for this?

Not at five lawns. A paper planner works when you can hold the whole route in your head. The trouble starts around the point where rain days, skipped weeks and new customers stop fitting on one page, or when a second truck goes out without you.

If you’re at that point, FieldFlow costs $19/month for the whole business, with no per-user fee for the summer helper, and starts with a 90-day free trial. Our lawn care page shows a day of it. If you’re comparing tools, the pricing page lays out what Jobber and Housecall Pro charge for the same things.

Questions owners ask

Should I schedule mowing weekly or every two weeks?

Weekly in the fast-growing months and every other week when growth slows is the usual pattern. Set each property up the way you sell it, and change the repeat when the customer changes their plan, rather than keeping two lists.

What do I do with repeating jobs in winter?

Pause the series instead of deleting it. The customer, the address, the notes and the price stay on the job, and you resume it in spring rather than setting the property up again.

How do I handle a rain day?

Move the visits that got rained out, not the whole series. Shift one visit, or move that visit and the ones after it, so next week's route stays where your customers expect it.

Can each visit be billed automatically?

In FieldFlow, a repeating job can carry an invoice template, and completing a visit drafts that visit's invoice from it. You review it and send it, from the truck or at the end of the day.